


Some Sunny Day

by Carlough



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5510639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carlough/pseuds/Carlough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lipton and Speirs say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Sunny Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jspringsteen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jspringsteen/gifts).



> I didn't think it was possible to write 3k of farewell angst, and yet, here we are. Thank you to everyone who looked over this for me and let me talk at them about it ad nauseam; you guys are the best.
> 
> As a note, this ignores the existence of Speirs's British wife and son. Title is a reference to Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" because I couldn't resist. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everybody!

Somehow, he'd thought that they would have had more time. The Pacific had seemed an inevitability – Japan didn't have to surrender just because Germany did, and it had only been a matter of time before Easy was transferred to their new theater. After all, it wasn't likely that the Marines were going to be able to finish things off on their own.

Carwood was due to be moved to a new Company after his commission, but the Army hadn't appeared to be taking that as a top priority seeing as there had yet to be any movement on that front. And so when Ron had chosen to stay with the men, he had allowed himself a dimwitted moment of false hope that he and Carwood would be transferred together, that they would have this twisted reprieve of a few more months together, fighting together, watching each other's backs and looking after the men, before the real world had to finally settle in.

He had known all along that it would have to end, eventually, either in their deaths or the end of the war. One day, this strange little camaraderie that Ron had never quite felt anywhere else would be broken by the realities of their lives outside of the war. But he had liked to pretend, foolishly, that what they had, whatever it was, could last forever, or at least for a little longer.

All he'd wanted was just a little longer.

Reality and Ron had never really gotten along, and that trend had continued when Second World War came to an end for Easy Company on a sunny summer day. Typical of the U.S. Army there began a sudden scramble of hurry-up-and-wait to ship the men home; the 506th was to be deactivated upon their return.

Despite his best-laid plans and unspoken desires, Easy Company was being dissolved out from under Ron, and Carwood was going with it.

It was a good thing, of course, for Carwood to be able to return to his wife and his family. His mother needed a lot of help running the boarding house, and maybe under the new G.I. Bill he could go back to college like he'd been talking about. Carwood had a future for him back in West Virginia, a good one, a happy one, a future that promised a career and a family and a happily ever after.

That future wouldn't include one Ronald Speirs, but then, it had never been intended to.

Their relationship – their friendship – had been forged by war, by bonds of blood, yes, but blood spilled. That sort of connection formed by tension and stress and proximity and familiarity and the necessity of absolute trust in the man next to you was always a temporary thing, steadfast as steel in battle and made fragile outside of it by separation and time.

They would never again be as close as they were right now, right as they were about to say goodbye, possibly seeing each other in person for the final time. There would never be a better time to tell Carwood about the knot in his throat and the tightness in his chest. How something light and nervous deep in his stomach revolted at the very idea of goodbye, of breaking that bond they'd created on the battlefield in Foy and in a convent in Rachamps and in a house in Haguenau with Lipton coughing up his lungs and refusing to just _go to sleep_ already.

Losing that sort of connection was unspeakable, unfathomable, inevitable.

A short goodbye would be best. The shortest ones always were: crisp, polite, professional, and with mutual esteem reaffirmed on both sides. A handshake, a smile, and a permanent departure.

The permanency was the sticking point. There was no guarantee in a goodbye, no matter how many promises and addresses were exchanged. Assurances to write were forgotten when real life came calling with late hours and new babies and little time to think about all of those things you wanted to forget, the things you only thought about late at night when you woke shaking in your bed, sweat cooling on your brow and hoping you didn't wake your wife again. Goodbye was permanent until proven wrong by actual fact, by the existence of a next meeting that postponed the last goodbye, reset the clock on forever until you parted again and a new goodbye challenged you to test its finality.

Ron had never been good at those meetings that negated a goodbye with another "hello." He didn't stay connected with those lost friends from grade school and summer camp, those who moved out of town and promised to stay friends forever. He knew how the truest goodbye was the one in person, the one that everyone assured you was only temporary: the rest, the fading letters and ephemeral promises to meet up sometime, were just a slow death to a connection that you had at one point valued. Ron had always preferred a clean break instead of the lingering, clinging, dying thread of a friendship forgotten. You knew where you stood when you set the finality of the goodbye yourself. It wasn't that you didn't like somebody – just the opposite, actually: one enclosed, final farewell let you preserve the memory of a connection like a snapshot in the album of your life, capturing all of the fond feelings at their finest and preserving them from fading over time without the lingering regrets and nostalgia and bitterness of a relationship lost.

He knew that would be best for his friendship with Carwood, to not put a bookmark in it that would slip between the pages and be forgotten but instead to frame the moment and put it up on a shelf to be admired one rainy day when something in his bones ached for the thrill and the adrenaline and the camaraderie of a war. Carwood wouldn't like it at first, would have to get used to it; of course he would protest, because he was sentimental like that, actively so, in a way that led him to hold on to relationships, to check up on people. To look after them, even if he couldn't see them. He wouldn't like Ron's goodbye, even if Ron was doing it to allow Carwood to move on with his new post-war life without lingering ghosts of the war trailing him back to reality.

Ron was a ghost of the war. He fit too well into the Army's mold, embracing his existence as a soldier so thoroughly that he unintentionally appeared born of military lore. He was out of place back in the real world, surrounded by average citizens going about their lives; he'd known that since his first trip home from military school. He stood out as a permanent soldier, unable and unwilling to shake off the comfortable familiarity of the military, in favor of suburbia and regular work hours. He would be an echo of the war standing out sharp and discordant and unwelcome to men who wanted to close that chapter of their lives and begin anew.

There would be no room for a specter like that in Carwood's new life.

Ron would hate to intrude.

And so he planned his final goodbye to be just that: unobtrusive, at the train station of all places, as they prepared to board trains heading in opposite directions, Carwood to West Virginia and Ron to Massachusetts. This was the prime place for a separation, a natural parting of ways. Easy had begun to dissolve as soon as they arrived back in the United States, their numbers decreasing by the day as everybody trickled home. It was only fitting for their COs to do the same.

It was difficult, he found, with Carwood looking at him with that wide, open expression and those calmly trusting eyes, to make the words he had so carefully practiced appear. His throat felt full of cotton and his tongue made of lead, the weak turns of his smile heavy against the sudden weight of the moment.

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to acknowledge that this was the end, for them, the last time he would be allowed to bask in the sunshine of Carwood's affection and admiration and the last time Ron would look upon his smile and his kindness and feel warmed by the fact that he was permitted to be in Carwood's presence, a friend.

He didn't want to say goodbye.

But he knew that what he wanted and what Carwood wanted and what was best for the both of them were not always the same things.

"It's been a pleasure serving with you, Lieutenant." He forced the bland words into existence, falling like hollow wooden blocks from his tongue. He accompanied it with a shark-eyed smile, the kind that had the men scurrying off with suddenly remembered chores, but it was immediately apparent that Carwood would not be fooled.

He rarely was, when it came to things that were important to him.

"It's been wonderful serving with you, too, sir." Carwood's words were slow, testing, those sincere eyes searching Ron's face with obvious concern.

Ron wanted to grab onto him and wrap him up and hold onto that expression forever.

He stayed where he was.

"I trust that you'll be well, back in West Virginia? Your mother runs a boarding house, right?"

The words that he had planned so well, thought-out and concise and appropriate, had fled him and left in their place only a desperate, scrabbling desire to prolong the inevitable once more, if only for the moment. If they couldn't have Japan, they could at least have strained small-talk in a New York City train station.

Carwood smiled. "Yeah. My mother – she needs a lot of help, since the accident, but between my siblings and me, we get by alright. We'll be okay."

"And – your wife?"

Ron couldn't keep his traitorous eyes from roving Carwood's face now, watching as Carwood's smile turned thoughtful and went somewhere far-away from where Ron could ever reach it.

"She's wonderful, sir. I know she's been a great help to my family while I've been away."

_Away_ , like Carwood had only departed for a business trip and not to kill people on another continent. That was the difference between Carwood and Ron: Carwood could go _away_ , disappear on a temporary trip and come back to the same page where he had left off, slip back into that old life and continue as if nothing had ever happened. Ron went away and came back a killer, returning to find that the puzzle of his life had changed and did not leave a space for him, for something so sharp and foreign. When Ron went _away_ , part of him never came back.

"That's good, Lieutenant. That's good. I'm sure the two of you will make a very happy family together."

And here Carwood blushed, the one flash of red that Ron could never associate with blood even when blood was the very thing that caused it.

"Yes, sir, I – we hope to, sir. What with the new income and all, we think I should be able to go back to college and we can start a family soon."

He wouldn't meet Ron's eyes, but Ron knew that if he could see them, there would be a smile there, that same fond, distanced look he always got when he thought about his wife and West Virginia and a future without war.

It was just that, whether he knew it or not, a future without war meant a future without Ron. A specter of war cannot exist without its maker.

"You can call me Ron, you know. The war is over. I'm not your superior anymore."

The words held their own weight that had nothing to do with Ron's hesitance, but he didn't even want to begin parsing the sentiment.

Carwood's previous flush came back with a force and he ducked his head, but when he peeked up again Ron could see that he was smiling. "I know that, sir – Ron. It's just a force of habit, I guess."

His expression turned conspiratorial, nearly sly, and he added, "I guess I should get used to it, though – it might get a little awkward if I kept calling you 'Captain' in all of my letters."

It was a fact of Carwood's nature that he would always unerringly, intentionally or not, suss out the root of any issue you sought to keep hidden.

Ron adjusted his pack against his shoulder.

"Yes, I'm sure."

He couldn't do it. He couldn't put it into words, to explain a concept to Carwood that would have been so painfully foreign to him – and upsetting. Carwood would never understand. He would revolt. He would fight harder to keep his connection to Ron solely because he knew that Ron was trying to sever it for their own good.

Ron might do his best to pack this moment into its assigned keepsake box and store it away, but Carwood was going to make him keep taking it out of the box and dusting it off, examining it all over again, at least until Carwood, like everybody else, let the moment get faded and dull and worn until he couldn't remember why he'd thought it important in the first place.

It was as inevitable as any goodbye, that the significance would disappear with every distanced letter and rote "how are you," but try as he might to preserve this moment for the both of them, to maintain his good favor in Carwood's eyes, Ron could do nothing to stop it. Upsetting him now with his explanations would only serve to tarnish the moment further.

The clock over Carwood's shoulder said that his train was leaving in ten minutes.

It would be best to end on a high note.

"Well, Lieutenant – Carwood. It looks like your train is leaving soon."

He smiled, a little more real this time, as Carwood glanced at the clock and frowned.

"I hadn't realized – well. I guess I should get to boarding, then. I wouldn't want to be left behind."

The joke was like tepid bathwater, but they both smiled anyway, the words meaningless in the face of the event.

"No," Ron mused quietly, his eyes never leaving Carwood's, "We wouldn't want that."

Carwood was watching him, one of those same unreadable looks on his face, as if there was something endlessly fascinating that he was hoping to uncover and all of the answers lied in Ron. Ron had a lot of secrets, and a lot of answers, but he could never determine what questions Carwood was trying to ask.

But if the expression on Carwood's face meant anything, there was something that he very deeply wanted to ask. Ron wasn't sure what it would be, but he had a sketch of an idea, a wisp of traitorous thought that served to undermine everything he had planned, and he said, "Hold on, let me write down my address for you."

The resulting smile on Carwood's face was both the question and the answer that Ron had been looking for. His fate was sealed and his plans destroyed, but there was little that he could ever deny Carwood Lipton.

Carwood beamed at the scrap of paper with four hastily-scrawled lines on it as if it were his own personal sunshine. "I'll be sure to write to you soon. I know I'll have a lot to tell you."

"I'm sure you will."

Ron was damning himself to this fate, perhaps, but he was going to accept it with grace.

He held out his hand.

"Lieutenant." The shark's smile turned conspiratorial; once more for the road.

Carwood caught on immediately, just as he'd known he would.

"Captain," he replied, his smile bleeding into his voice. He grasped Ron's hand warmly. "I'll be seeing you again soon. Just as soon as we get settled in – I'd love to show you around Huntington, introduce you to my family. I'm sure they'd love to meet you."

Ron smiled through all of the doubts whispering the truth to him. "I'll see what I can do."

It was the closest thing he could say to the truth.

A bell clanged, signaling some sort of last-call. Carwood glanced away, and the moment shattered; when he looked back, expression chagrinned, he shook Ron's hand firmly, and then let go.

(The imprint of his palm in Ron's remained warm; Ron was hard-pressed not to clench his hand into a fist, just to try to hold onto this one thing, too.)

"Goodbye, Ron." His smile was in his voice, but his heart was in his eyes, too painfully sincere for Ron to look away. His salute made the knot in Ron's throat difficult to swallow around.

Ron smiled back, the shark soft and without teeth.

"Goodbye, Carwood." He saluted back, textbook-perfect, never losing Carwood's gaze.

And then the moment cleared, and Carwood was grabbing up his bag and hustling to the train, looking back over his shoulder and leaving repeated promises to write right away, as soon as he got home.

Ron smiled, and he nodded, because there was nothing more he could do. He had resigned himself to his fate.

Carwood was actively sentimental: he didn't like to let things go. Ron was passively sentimental: he let them go, so that he could pack up what remained and hold onto it forever.

In a way, they fit perfectly, opposites attracting, and yet, if you flipped just one of the magnets, they would be pushing each other apart permanently, forever.

An inevitable goodbye, if you will.

This was Ron's inevitable goodbye, the final farewell. And he would hold onto it and cherish it and remember a time when Carwood Lipton had smiled at him and it had felt, for a brief, frozen time in Europe, as if they truly fit together, as if Ronald Speirs had finally met his match in a soft-spoken and kind-hearted First Sergeant from West Virginia.

He would keep that moment, unless and until Carwood proved him wrong and delayed their last goodbye once more.

Ron wasn't one given to pointless dreaming, but when it came to Carwood, he could never stop hoping that maybe, they might get just a little more time. If Japan didn't happen, then maybe, later, they could have this instead.

Ron swore by inevitabilities, but sometimes, just once in a while, he was wrong. It was after all inevitable that it would have to happen eventually.

He very much hoped that he would be wrong.


End file.
